Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I'm John Henderson, the Chairman of the Cytokinetics Board of Directors, and I welcome you to our 2025 annual meeting of stockholders. The meeting is now called to order. John Faurescu, our Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, will record the minutes of the meeting. Before proceeding to the formal business, let me introduce Robert Blum, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Robert will provide a review of our 2024 accomplishments and plans for 2025 after our formal proceedings. I'm also pleased to introduce the other members of the Cytokinetics Board of Directors who are with us today: Muna Bhanji, Edward M. Kaye , Bob Landry, Lynne Parshall, and Nancy Wysenski. I'm also pleased to welcome members of the company's management who are joining us in person today.
Lastly, I would like to introduce Dan Coleman of Ernst & Young LLP, the company's independent registered public accounting firm, who is available to respond to any questions, or appropriate questions, I should say, not just any questions. I would like to turn the meeting over to John Faurescu at this point to conduct the formal business of today's meeting, as set forth in your annual notice, excuse me, of annual meeting and proxy statement. After the formal part of our meeting, Robert Blum will review the company's recent business activities. So, John.
Thank you, John.
Thank you.
Thank you, John. I have at this meeting a complete list of the stockholders of record of the company's capital stock on March 24, 2025, the record date for this meeting. I have proof by affidavit that the company's proxy statement, proxy card, and annual report on Form 10-K were deposited in the United States mail, commencing on April 10, 2025, to all stockholders of record at the close of business on March 24, 2025. The affidavit, together with the copies of the proxy statement, proxy card, and annual report, will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. In addition, Mr. Sung Lee, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will serve as the inspector of elections to carry out the duties set forth under the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware . Mr. Lee has signed an oath of office as inspector of election.
The oath of inspector of election will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. We have present in person and by proxy holders of a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum, so the meeting is duly constituted. We will vote by proxy and written ballot today. If you are a stockholder attending the meeting today in person and have turned in a proxy and do not intend to change your vote, then it is not necessary that you vote because we will count your votes as expressed in your proxy. Those attending stockholders present in the room today who did not turn in a proxy card or who wish to change their vote and have your proxy card with you, please raise your hand. Are there any additional proxies to be submitted at this time?
Is there anyone present, whether or not you've already submitted a proxy, who now wants to vote in person? The polls are now open for voting this May 14, 2025, at 10:03 A.M. Pacific Time. The polls will be closed to voting after we go through the matters to be voted on. We will first present the five proposals submitted for approval. Please save all questions related to the proposals for after all the proposals have been presented, after which we will announce the preliminary results of the voting. The first item of business is the election of directors. The following three directors are nominated by the Board of Directors as class three directors of the company to serve until our 2028 annual meeting of stockholders: John Henderson, Lynne Parshall, and Muna Bhanji. The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders vote for these three class three director nominees.
The second item of business is the approval of the amendment and restatement of the company's amended and restated 2004 Equity Incentive Plan to increase the number of authorized shares reserved for issuance under such plan by 5 million shares of common stock and to provide for limitations on the maximum grant value that non-executive directors may receive under such plan of $1 million for annual grants to continuing directors and $1,250,000 for the initial grant to new directors. The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders vote for the approval of this proposal. The third item of business is the approval of the amendment of the company's amended and restated certificate of incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock available for issuance by the company from 163 million to 326 million shares of common stock.
The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders vote for the approval of this proposal. The fourth item of business is the ratification of the selection by the Audit Committee of our independent public auditors. The Audit Committee of the Board of Directors has selected Ernst & Young LLP to serve as our Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025. The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders vote for the ratification of this selection. The fifth and final item of business is the advisory vote on the executive compensation of the company's named executive officers, as described in our proxy statement for this annual meeting.
The stockholders have been asked to vote on an advisory basis on the following resolution: resolved that the company's stockholders approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation of the named executive officers, as disclosed in the company's proxy statement for the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders, pursuant to the compensation disclosure rules of the SEC, including the compensation discussion and analysis, the related compensation tables, and the narrative disclosure to those tables in the proxy statement. The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders vote for the advisory proposal. We will now review if there are any questions about the aforementioned proposals before we close the polls. No questions. It is now 10:05 A.M., and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this meeting are now closed.
No additional ballots or votes, and no changes or revocations to ballots or proxies will be accepted. At this time, I would like to report on the results of the voting. Regarding proposal one, the proposal to elect each of John Henderson, Lynne Parshall, and Muna Bhanji, John Henderson received 86,834,097 votes for his election, and 14,784,943 votes were withheld. Lynne Parshall received 98,261,990 votes for her election, and 3,357,050 votes were withheld. Muna Bhanji received 89,316,977 votes for her election, and 12,302,063 votes were withheld. Therefore, the proposal to elect each of John Henderson, Lynne Parshall, and Muna Bhanji is approved, and each of them is hereby reelected.
Regarding proposal two, the approval of the amendment and restatement of the company's amended and restated 2004 Equity Incentive Plan to increase the number of authorized shares reserved for issuance under such plan by 5 million shares of common stock and provide for limitations on the maximum grant value that non-executive directors may receive under such plan of $1 million for annual grants to continuing directors and $1,250,000 for the initial grant to new directors. Votes in favor of the proposal were 97,782,771 votes, and votes against the proposal were 3,668,236. 168,029 votes, 168,029 votes were abstained. Therefore, the proposal is approved. Regarding proposal three, the approval of the amendment to the company's amended and restated certificate of incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock available for issuance by the company from 163 million to 326 million shares of common stock.
Votes in favor of the proposal were 107,322,080. Votes against the proposal were 3,009,572, and 154,552 votes were abstained. The proposal is approved. Regarding proposal four, the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors as the company's Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025. Votes in favor of the proposal were 110,254,216. Votes against the proposal were 77,441, and 154,547 votes were abstained. The proposal has been ratified. Regarding proposal five, the resolution concerning the advisory vote on the compensation of the named executive officers, as disclosed in the company's proxy statement for the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders, votes in favor of the proposal were 96,760,272. Votes against the proposal were 4,607,831, and 250,937 votes were abstained. The proposal is approved.
This concludes the formal business of the meeting, and we would now like to begin our report to stockholders. The meeting is now concluded. The following discussion and presentation contain forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results might differ materially from those projected in these statements. Factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. Copies of these documents may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the investor relations section of our website. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today. You should not rely on them as representing our views in the future, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements.
I will now turn the meeting over to Robert Blum, our President and Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, John. In my role as President and CEO, I'm pleased to be addressing you at our Cytokinetics 21st Annual Stockholder Meeting. Thank you to everyone who has joined us in person and also to those listening online. As reflected in our shareholder letter, 2024 was a year in which we made important progress and laid the foundation for executing on Vision 2030, our five-year strategic objectives designed to propel Cytokinetics to become the leading muscle-focused specialty biopharmaceutical company intentioned on meaningfully improving the lives of patients through global access to innovative medicines. Vision 2030 serves as an aspirational roadmap made up of five pillars: innovation, ignition, impact, inspiration, and ingenuity. These pillars articulate how we want to deliver product approvals, achieve broader access to our medicines, promote more equitable access, and advance our pioneering research to benefit patients as well as shareholders and all employees.
Most notably, amongst our achievements in 2024 were the regulatory submissions for Aficamten in the United States, in Europe, and also in China. The filings were supported by positive results from SEQUOIA-HCM, the pivotal Phase 3 Clinical Trial of Aficamten in patients with Obstructive HCM. Those results were presented earlier last year and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In 2025, we're now actively engaging FDA in advance of our PDUFA date of December 26, 2025, while we're also interacting with regulatory authorities in Europe and in China to also enable global access for Aficamten. As we disclosed recently, the FDA extended the PDUFA date for the NDA for Aficamten for the treatment of patients with Obstructive HCM to December 26, 2025, to provide them additional time to conduct a full review of our proposed REMS.
While the PDUFA extension does delay the potential approval of Aficamten, it does not change our confidence in its distinct benefit risk and pharmaceutics profile, nor does it change our expectation for a potentially differentiated label and risk mitigation profile for Aficamten upon its potential approval. In 2024, we also continued to advance the clinical development program for Aficamten. We completed enrollment in MAPLE-HCM, the Phase 3 Clinical Trial evaluating Aficamten as monotherapy compared to metoprolol as monotherapy in patients with Obstructive HCM. Yesterday, we shared that the trial met its primary efficacy endpoint, demonstrating a statistically significant change in Peak Oxygen Uptake , or peak VO2, from baseline to week 24 for Aficamten compared to metoprolol. We look forward to presenting the full results from MAPLE-HCM at an upcoming major medical meeting later this year.
We also progressed ACACIA-HCM, the pivotal Phase 3 Clinical Trial of Aficamten in patients with Non-obstructive HCM, a rapidly growing and underserved segment of the HCM population. That study completed enrollment in Q1 of this year, and last year, we also started CEDAR-HCM, evaluating Aficamten in pediatric patients with Obstructive HCM. These clinical trials could enable multiple potential label expansion and further product lifecycle management for Aficamten. With Aficamten as the anchor of our emerging specialty cardiology franchise, we also advanced two later-stage potential therapies. Omecamtiv Mecarbil, a cardiac myosin activator, is the subject of COMET-HF, an ongoing confirmatory Phase 3 Clinical Trial in patients with heart failure with severely reduced ejection fraction. CK-586, an additional cardiac myosin inhibitor, is the subject of AMBER-HFpEF, a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.
Both Omecamtiv Mecarbil and CK-586 target underserved patient populations at opposite ends of the spectrum of heart failure, for which there are few available therapies, high unmet need, as well as concentrated customer segments. It's our specialty cardiology franchise which is the cornerstone of our business ambitions and with the potential to deliver multiple medicines to patients over the next several years, and as we hope will serve to return enduring growth and value for all of our shareholders. Importantly, last year, we raised over $1 billion in cash through equity capital fundraising activities, as well as a concurrent structured finance and royalty monetization deal with Royalty Pharma. This balanced and diversified fundraising provides a strong financial foundation to support the commercialization of Aficamten while we also pursue R&D activities and take advantage of pipeline expansion opportunities consistent with our strategic planning in our Vision 2030.
We're pleased to be in an advantaged position with a strong balance sheet and cash position reflecting thoughtful and prudent planning and preparation in 2024 that will allow us to execute on all of our key priorities in 2025. 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year of transformation for Cytokinetics as we ready for potential approval and launch of Aficamten and further development of our specialty cardiovascular franchise. Guided by our Vision 2030, every step we take is purposeful, shaping the future we aspire to achieve. In the corporate presentation that will soon follow, I plan to share highlights of the progress we achieved in 2024, as well as some of our more recent activities related to these development programs.
For those of you joining us by webcast, you can please find a PDF of the presentation slides under the Downloads tab in the webcast window, and I'll now provide my update to the company. Here depicted on this slide is the Vision 2030 that I just spoke to. You can see that it does address the five pillars mentioned, but importantly, it's the words in that vision statement that guides us every day at Cytokinetics. Building on our 27 years in research and drug development, we're now at a transformational pivot point for the company as we expect to be advancing at least two approved products through regulatory approvals, potentially for three indications, and at the same time, advancing our pipeline, augmenting what we're already doing by achieving what we hope could be as many as 10 new molecular entities over the next five years.
Importantly, in terms of achieving our patient-centric values, we expect to achieve broad access and rapid use of our medicines in the United States, of course, but not only in the United States. We have ambition to be achieving feet on the ground and execution of strategy to be enabling access in over 15 countries throughout North America and Europe. Moreover, those patients, and we think there's over 100,000 of them that could be benefiting from our medicines over the next few years, should be getting equitable access and affordable access to our medicines, and that drives inspiration of values. It does not stop there. We expect to continue to pioneer and lead with research that is augmenting our external and internal pipeline as we achieve additional aspirations in muscle biology and new pharmacologies. Here's what that pipeline looks like today.
You can see it's rooted in myosin modulation, three drug candidates directed to the same molecular target, a mechanical enzyme that drives cardiac muscle mechanics and contractility. Foremost amongst these is Aficamten. Aficamten is a potential next-in-class cardiac myosin inhibitor pending regulatory approvals for patients with oHCM in the United States, but also in Europe and in China, with a PDUFA date, as I mentioned, end of December 2025 in the United States. I'm very pleased to share that we have been investing in enhancing and expanding potential label and new indications as well. You can see here that we have on this slide clinical studies ongoing: Maple, Acacia, Forest, Cedar, all these directed to other patient populations who could also benefit from Aficamten. What a pleasure it was yesterday to be announcing that MAPLE-HCM met its primary efficacy endpoint. We're very excited about those data.
Those results are currently withheld from public communication because we do believe that they will be soon, hopefully later this year, presented and concurrently, we hope, published for the benefit of all stakeholders. We look forward to sharing those results at a major medical meeting. MAPLE-HCM represents the next step in that journey, and soon thereafter, we hope to have ACACIA-HCM in patients with Non-obstructive HCM. At our recent earnings call, we announced that we not only accelerated enrollment to be enabling that to complete sooner than planned, six months sooner than originally planned, but we also over-enrolled that study as adds statistical power, we believe, to the hypotheses that we're testing in that study. We are very optimistic and enthusiastic about what that could mean also for patients with nHCM. The list goes on.
I won't go through every one of these, but each of these lines represents another opportunity to deliver on the promise of our science for the benefit of patients. Beyond cardiac muscle, to include also skeletal muscle and other research in muscle biology that lies beneath the hood, so to speak, of activities here in research laboratories in South San Francisco. What does that mean for shareholders? What it means is a frequency and rapidity of news flow, many catalysts this year, next year, the year after, in terms of what could be unlocking and delivering increasing shareholder value as we continue to advance pipeline and execute on business strategy. We believe this is a derivative of good, thoughtful planning, investment in R&D, and as could deliver on future business opportunities. That's what we're all about here.
It's a company devoted to science for the benefit of patients and as delivers, we think, enduring and growing value for shareholders, not necessarily only over the long term, but as you can see here, over the near term and medium term as well. These are not small market opportunities. These are market opportunities that are represented not in only ultra-orphan indications, but orphan and non-orphan indications measured in hundreds of thousands and even over in aggregate millions of patients. It's a specialty cardiology model that we take very seriously, borrowing pages from the playbook of companies that have preceded us. Admittedly, not every biopharma company should go to market. Not every biopharma company has a platform that delivers on what could be return on investment for commercial business.
Here at Cytokinetics, we've thoughtfully approached this from a specialty cardiology business model, intersecting the advantages of specialty pharma with advantages of cardiology and as enables us to focus to large and growing markets of high unmet need, but in a sequential way where with a concentrated sales and marketing infrastructure, we believe we can achieve a high return on investment, a high return on shareholder equity. That is what we think we're in the position to deliver on over these next couple of years. Here is the same kind of information depicted sequentially in timeline: 2025 begets 2026, 2027, and beyond. Cytokinetics is in an enviable and advantaged position to be delivering on product approvals, multiple indications, expansions of labeling that is good for science, that is good for medicine, that is good for business, we believe, and as could be ultimately rewarding of shareholder value. Aficamten.
Aficamten has an opportunity to be amongst very important new medicines for the delivery of care for patients who have high unmet need, specifically in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a slide that depicts how we're thinking about market opportunity. As you can see, there are those patients who are diagnosed and symptomatic. There's also those patients who are eligible for new treatment, but for which the current treatment options haven't activated physicians adequately. We believe that a cardiac myosin inhibitor like Aficamten can build on the current market opportunity with a first-in-class drug already approved, but enable category growth and preferential share of category, as could be enabling of us to achieve more and more penetration for the still over 80% of patients with Obstructive HCM who are not being treated today with a cardiac myosin inhibitor. We believe these markets are growing.
At one time, we thought the Obstructive HCM market represented two-thirds of the total market. Now we think that's probably closer to 50/50 obstructive and Non-obstructive HCM. We believe that we're in a good position with ongoing clinical studies to hopefully bring forward a new medicine that can be addressing of unmet needs in these large market opportunities. It matters how we go to market. It matters that we bring to potential patients advantages that could come with a distinct profile for Aficamten. From the very beginnings, from the drug discovery initial conception, we've designed and engineered into Aficamten properties that we believe will play to strengths in the marketplace. You can see them here.
Things like time to onset in terms of gradient reduction for patients with high pressure gradients, things that we've already observed in clinical trials, changes in symptom burden as measured by KCCQ and NYHA class improvements, pharmacodynamics, and in particular, the relationship between the pharmacokinetics of the drug and its pharmacodynamics, as we think lend to physician and patient convenience. All these things we believe factor into how Aficamten may ultimately be received by physicians, by payers, and also by patients. SEQUOIA-HCM was the first of several Phase 3 clinical studies. It read out in 2024, and quite positively, I should say. Here's the study schema. I won't go into it in great detail, but we measured Aficamten on top of standard of care in patients with Obstructive HCM. The primary objective of the study was to measure change in peak VO2.
Here you can see on the left hand of this slide a very large, clinically meaningful, and statistically significant change of Aficamten on top of standard of care as measured 24 weeks after randomization. These changes are deemed very relevant, clinically meaningful, and important for advancing treatment options for patients with oHCM. These data were received to a standing ovation at the European Heart Failure Meetings in 2024 and also concurrently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It does not stop there. We achieved on all secondary endpoints as pre-specified in that trial. Here you can see rapid and sustained gradient reductions. Here you can see that was accompanied by balance in safety. Aficamten achieved all of those efficacy parameters at the same time without increase in any untoward or concerning adverse effects.
We believe this will be enabling of activation of more and more cardiologists to be comfortable with a new treatment option for their patients. We've already begun to map forward, design, and execute on our go-to-market strategy, many of our commercial colleagues here in the audience today. We do believe our design principles are different. How we go to market here speaks to learnings from market research and understandings of where there are impediments and burdens and how we can address that in a bespoke way for the benefit of physicians and payers and patients.
We're taking a non-traditional approach as defined by our specialty orientation with more of a one-to-one relationship between our cardiology account specialists and the offices that they call on, a more bespoke patient experience in terms of how patients receive medicines and also how our HCM navigators and our patient hub will interact with patients to be benefiting their experience. This is all custom for the benefit of this go-to-market launch. The good news is we don't have to redeploy a legacy system, but we can design one that we think is fit for purpose for the market we'll be entering. All of this speaks to how we address, again, patient centricity in our business ambitions. Patient centricity has not just been rhetoric at Cytokinetics. It defines how we think about science, research, and development, and also the carry forward or pull through to our marketing and sales.
I would put forward that when we hopefully will be in the marketplace, this will be something we dashboard and measure so that we always know that patient experience remains at the top end of the ladder for us as we define our business activities. Other activities that are in works already in terms of how we support our go-to-market. Cytokinetics has been engaging in a compliant way with payers for quite some time. Both our market access and our medical affairs colleagues have been understanding what payers are looking for so that we can design health economic studies, epidemiologic studies, budget impact models, and other things that are enabling of payers to best understand what could be advantages of Aficamten in this marketplace.
We consider payers to be foremost amongst our customers, and we understand their motivations, their interests, and we expect that we'll be addressing them with strategies that we'll be launching when we have potential FDA approval. It does not stop with the United States. We're approaching this in a global way consistent with culture and values. You can see while not everything will be done by Cytokinetics alone, in Asia we're partnered with Bayer in Japan, with Sanofi in China. We're thinking globally about ensuring Aficamten is broadly available to patients in need. It is not enough to be thinking about the U.S. patients for a medicine such as this. We need to be thinking about how it can impact disease burden across the world. That is Sequoia. That is go-to-market for Aficamten, hopefully by the end of this year.
As I mentioned, we were overjoyed yesterday to announce positive results for MAPLE-HCM. Those results, again, we expect will be presented at a major medical meeting, hopefully soon, and we look forward to elaborating on the primary efficacy endpoints, on all endpoints, on safety, tolerability, and as could be potentially enabling of expanded labeling for Aficamten subject to what would be expected to be a supplemental NDA filing in 2026. That sets the table for yet further studies ongoing and as would be announced over time, Acacia, Cedar, and the ongoing open label extension study FOREST-HCM. Consider Aficamten to be the first leg of a three-legged stool, a three-legged stool that speaks to other myosin modulators also arising from our own research and development.
Cytokinetics has invested in this area of science and biology for quite some time, and it's coming to a forefront not just with Aficamten, but soon thereafter, we hope with Omecamtiv and also CK-586. Omecamtiv has already been the subject of over 30 completed clinical trials in patients, healthy volunteers, and heart failure, and the subject of a positive Phase 3 study called GALACTIC-HF already published in the New England Journal. This study was a landmark study, the second largest heart failure study ever conducted, and showing Omecamtiv on top of standard of care produced clinically meaningful effects, statistically significant for the benefit of patients. We learned something from this study. We learned that the effects, as encouraging and compelling as they were, were even more pronounced in the sickest of these heart failure patients.
As FDA has requested, we're now doing a confirmatory Phase 3 study called Comet, taking from within the GALACTIC-HF learnings application to the study of Omecamtiv Mecarbil in the more severe advanced heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction who do not have good alternatives, and where we expect upon completion of the study the possibility that Omecamtiv Mecarbil is achieving an even larger impact on death and rehospitalization. Keep in mind, please, that heart failure remains the number one reason why patients in the United States are hospitalized, especially those over the age of 65. Heart failure remains the number one driver of Medicare costs. We believe that Omecamtiv Mecarbil, on top of standard of care, could become a mainstay treatment for those more advanced severe patients. This study is underway, enrolling, and we expect could complete enrollment next year.
We believe that the market opportunity for Omecamtiv Mecarbil, even as we're going after a subset of those patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, is still large and compelling. These are the numbers that feed our forecasts, and we do believe even when you look at high-risk heart failure patients with ejection fractions less than 30%, there's a large and growing with the aging demographics population for which Omecamtiv Mecarbil could become an important cornerstone of future therapies. Based on clinical evidence already to date, the market opportunity, the unmet need, the payer interests, we believe that this could be a very compelling opportunity for a new approach, new medicine for these patients. Here you see depicted some of the things I've spoken to.
These are patients that represent not only clinical need, but high economic burden for which there could be a very strong pharmacoeconomic case to be made for Omecamtiv Mecarbil. You will be hearing more about some of the things we are doing in concert with COMET-HF that should be driving an economic rationale for the adoption of Omecamtiv Mecarbil if this study proves fruitful. CK-586, this is another cardiac myosin modulator like Aficamten. It is an inhibitor. I will remind you Omecamtiv Mecarbil is an activator. This is the third leg on the three-legged stool, CK-586 being directed to those patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction who resemble patients with Non-obstructive HCM. These are patients who do not have HCM, but they have heart failure, but they have higher ejection fractions and an anatomy that more resembles what we see with Non-obstructive HCM. They have thickened ventricles. They have the same symptom burdens.
These are not patients who seem to be well served by existing heart failure treatments like Entresto or SGLT2 inhibitors, but we do believe there's a compelling rationale for a myosin inhibitor. We are studying CK-586, a compound with a distinct mechanism from Aficamten, different pharmaceutics, different pharmacology, separate chemical scaffold. We are studying CK-586 in a Phase 2 study called AMBER-HFpEF. This is a study that should be enabling of us to float a hypothesis that would be tested further in Phase 3 as could be a new treatment regimen for these patients. Here you can see on this slide why we believe this is a compelling opportunity for CK-586. Here is the study currently enrolling. It's called Amber.
We're expecting to hopefully complete two of these cohorts in this calendar year as would be setting the table potentially for completing this study and potentially proceeding then to Phase 3 as soon as potentially next year. There you see it. That's the leading edge of our specialty cardiology franchise, three drug candidates building on the same biology, all as pioneered by our scientists upstairs from this building. I'd like to now end the presentation by elaborating on how we get there from a prudent resource management standpoint. Last year, I mentioned that we did some fundraising. Cytokinetics raised over $1 billion in a way that we think was balanced to shareholder interests. It was enabling of both an equity financing, but a concurrent royalty monetization and financial engineering transaction executed with Royalty Pharma.
We believe in that way we demonstrated ways of monetizing future value and at the same time not having it come solely at the expense of equity shareholder dilution. That enabled us to end last year and also more recently Q1 with over $1 billion on our balance sheet. Consider that alongside of access to additional capital that comes with milestone payments from partners, royalties from partners, as well as loans available to us from Royalty Pharma, we believe we're doing the kinds of financial engineering that's responsive to shareholder interests so that we can be oversight, lending oversight and good stewards of shareholder capital and enabling access to additional capital as may be warranted as we continue to advance our pipeline and business. These are levers we can pull.
We have upwards of $500 million in additional capital as could be at our disposal based on events and milestones that may follow, some this year and some next year. We will have more to say about this going forward, but we do believe this affords us an advantage as it relates to most peer group companies in terms of not only balance sheet, but also access to additional capital as that may be appropriate in advancement of our business. In summary, here is Cytokinetics at a glance. You can see across this slide as we think about our commercial aspirations and plans, as we think about ongoing pipeline advancement, as we think about the foundations that come with our roots in values, our roots in science, and our financial resources, how all these things come together for the benefit of this company and all of its stakeholders. Milestones aplenty.
Here's what you can expect from us through the remainder of this year. We're already ticking off on multiple of these boxes with others to follow, and we do believe that as we will achieve more and more, this unlocks and delivers as shareholders may hopefully expect of us to translate science to pharmacology, research to development, to medicines in the hands of patients, and that's what we're all about. Thank you very much for your attention to that presentation. With that, I'm going to conclude my presentation and comments, and I'll open it up today for any questions that there may be here in the room. Hearing none, I'd like to thank you. Thank you again for your continued support of our company. It matters to us. It's very important, and we're grateful. We look forward to updating you on our progress.
With that, I'll turn it back over to John Henderson.
Great. Thank you, Robert. Thank you for this update on the progress Cytokinetics is making. It really is tremendous progress across our specialty cardiovascular franchise. I'd just like to add a thanks to all the people in Cytokinetics who are making this happen. It really is a tremendous effort, and I'm very proud of all you've achieved. 2025 is a very important year for us as we advance Aficamten toward regulatory approval in the U.S., Europe, and China and continue to execute on the broad development program that Robert has described across multiple patient populations who have real need.
We've got to focus on building a specialty cardiovascular franchise, which includes the advancement of Omecamtiv Mecarbil for the potential treatment of patients with heart failure with severely reduced ejection fraction, as well as CK-586 for the potential treatment of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Our future remains bright, and our values continue to guide us towards our objective of becoming the leading muscle-focused specialty biopharma company intent on meaningfully improving the lives of patients through global access to our innovative medicines. I'd like to thank everybody who's participated today in the stockholder meeting, and I declare the meeting is now adjourned. Thank you, everybody.